Backup pc game library to external hard drive!

Hi guys, my apologies if I'm posting in the wrong section. First of all, I've researched this topic quite a bit but there are still some unanswered questions. My issue is with the backup and restore of fully installed games, not just saved games/profiles.

My question would be this: if I copy a game to an external drive, wipe my notebook, then copy the game back, will it rewrite registry values when I try to play it or will it not function properly?

I understand this would apply for mostly recent games, especially those inf the Games for Windows category, but I was wondering if anyone had any knowledge regarding the registry thing.

Thanks.

 

Most games that must be installed will not recreate the registry entries. In my experience moving games only works about half the time, the other half of the time you need to reinstall them completely for those registry keys. More complicated games like Crysis that use SecureROM are more likely not to run, but simpler games like Minecraft can always be relocated.

If you have games on Steam, you can just copy the whole Steam folder from place to place and those games will still run fine. Nice of Valve to do that

So for most GFW, expect a reinstall, but it's always worth giving it a copy/paste run a shot. Do you have a game list actually? I just reinstalled Windows so I'm kind of in the same boat as you, except my games are on a second internal HDD. If you tell me what games you have, if I have them too I'll tell you if they still run without a reinstall. I don't have very many but hey why not try?

 

I have 200+ games installed. The reason for formatting my pc is that my registry got corrupted recently (bad...) and I have not been able to fix it properly. So I wanted to swipe everything and then reinstall... The good news is that more than half those games are on Steam

On a side note, does renaming the folder of a game's installation directory have any negative effect in the registry? Is it required to manually rename entries to match the new name?

 

That's quite a few games! lol

It might affect it the same as if you cut/pasted it but games usually look for things like authentication rather than if they're in the right folder. Again it'd vary from game to game but a renamed folder is less of a checkstop than if you wiped the registry entries entirely.

 

Thanks for the info. Looks like I have a few long weeks ahead of me That'll teach me to fiddle around with the registry...

 

I suppose if you're really dedicated you could hunt down each registry key associated with each game and then restore it afterwards. But either way, yeah it'll be a bit of work. Best of luck, hope all goes well